As a student of Islamic philosophy and teacher of Islam for a quarter century, I was baffled by the skewed presentation which Pope Benedict XVI offered, in passing, in his now infamous homecoming address at the University of Regensburg. Nor was I alone.

If I were a tutor marking the Pope's address strictly as a student paper, it would have first failed for "lack of organization." One cannot use remarks a Byzantine emperor makes about Islam, in the face of the threat of Constantinople's imminent demise, to illustrate (by contrast) a general thesis about the way Christianity (and not Islam) has relied on reason as developed in the Hellenic world. I would feel compelled to say: you have too much going on here; moreover, any attempt to illustrate something difficult to one's readers by something yet more obscure violates one of the rules of rhetoric developed in the Hellenic age.

Furthermore, whenever we employ a complex example to make a quick illustration, both are bound to suffer: the example will misrepresent the reality at stake and inevitably fail to illustrate what we want it to. And that is exactly what happened. Yet the fault in this instance lies with the writer and not with those who took umbrage, for in this case the writer transgressed one of the rules - that of rhetorical composition - of the very reason he intended to promote.

Let us forbear asking why an intelligent person in a very public role could make so egregious a blunder, for that would enter into speculation about motives which always proves fruitless. One can, however, ask about his guides, those who advise him on matters Islamic. But first, let me mention a friend of blessed memory.

Roger Arnaldez, a distinguished French Islamicist, did his dissertation on Ibn Hazm of Cordova, an Islamic thinker who stridently opposed to the Mu'tazilite rationalist current of thought - a current of thought that the Pope seems to take to represent the normative view of Islam on divine and human freedom. Yet the Pope must know, as Arnaldez certainly did, that there is no single "view of Islam" on this recondite matter. In fact, what westerners often misinterpret as "Islamic fatalism" may well be a profound faith-statement that the world as it is created by God is the one given to us to accept as "the best" - not in the abstract sense of "the best possible world" of which we can conceive, but in the existential sense that we can always praise God for whatever befalls us. Indeed, this is a profoundly arresting feature of Muslim practice. Nor should we forget the way Roger Arnaldez's mature work, Three Messengers for One God (which a group of us translated for University of Notre Dame Press) illustrates the way in which Jewish, Christian and Muslim thought and practice can converge at the interior level of spiritual appropriation.

Remaining at the intellectual level, western scholarship over the past quarter century has shown us how medieval syntheses like the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas relied on prior explorations by Jewish and Islamic thinkers to clarify their intent. And it is significant that such "discoveries" were not made in western Europe, but by reading the Summa from places like the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies in Cairo.

Remi Brague's celebrated study Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization has nuanced recent discussions about the role of Christianity in Europe's foundation by reminding us all that whatever one might claim as "European" had its origins elsewhere: beginning with Christianity in Judaism and continuing with medieval philosophical debts to Islam, and much more still. Indeed, Christian thinkers profited from Islamic philosophical traditions in the West a few centuries prior to military confrontations between Turks and Byzantium, which did not fare so well itself at the hands of western forces during the crusades.

So much for the unilateral picture of Muslim power conveyed to us by the Pope's citation of the work of Professor Khoury. In fact, there is nary a hint of exchange in the Pope's depiction of Islam and the West, as there is no self-critical grasp of the face "the West" presented to Islam over the centuries.

But as we turn to another source of the Pope's thinking on Islam - unmentioned by the Pope, but apparent in his remarks - the plot thickens. I have known Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., for over thirty years, as we have continued to profit from his pioneering work in Arabic Christian literature. Yet his recent contribution to this debate, where he reveals his proximity to the Pope, seems to emerge from a level of binary (or oppositional) thinking which belies his scholarly credentials. In fact, while the title of his article announces a "meeting" of civilizations, his text is replete with confrontations, as well as some egregious misconceptions. Citing a seminar with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo in 2005, Samir notes how the Pope

"insisted on ... the profound diversity between Islam and Christianity ... from a theological point of view, taking into account the Islamic conception of revelation: the Koran 'descended' upon Muhammad, it is not 'inspired' to Mohammad. For this reason, a Muslim does not think himself authorized to interpret the Koran, but is tied to this text which emerged in Arabia in the seventh century."

Samir concludes: "the absolute nature of the Koran makes dialogue all the more difficult, because there is very little room for interpretation, if at all." He seems quite oblivious of the rich tradition of commentary on the Qur'an, which parallels that of Judaism on the Bible. However much our respective traditions may differ on the provenance of Bible or of Qur'an, its divine origin never prohibited, but rather fostered, Islamic commentaries on the Holy Book in each succeding epoch of its history.

But an even more egregious and dangerous assertion occurs towards the end of his comments celebrating the Pope's views on Islam, where Samir praises the Pope for not "falling into the trap [of asking] forgiveness for the Crusades, colonialism, missionaries, cartoons, etc. ... because he knows that his words could be used not for building dialogue, but for destroying it." Here, of course, we are not hearing the Pope but Samir, and in full stride:

"this is the experience we have of the Muslim world: all such gestures, which are very generous and profoundly spiritual, to ask for forgiveness for historical events of the past, are exploited and are presented by Muslims as a settling of accounts; here, they say, you recognize it even yourself: you're guilty. Such gestures never spark any kind of reciprocity."

There is little qualification here: "our" initiatives have been spiritual and generous, theirs contentious. Implicitly the "we" would be Christian Arabs with whom Samir identifies; on the other side is "the Muslim world." There is no meeting here. But what leads me to suspect Samir is a counselor of the Pope in matters Islamic? His enthusiastic encomium at the end:

"I really like this pope, his balance, his clearness. He makes no compromise: he continues to underline the need to announce the Gospel in the name of rationality."

Yet Samir himself can easily skirt "rationality" in the form of inaccurate historical description of Qur'an traditions or of Christian-Muslim encounters. And in doing so, he traduces his own scholarly norms to grease the wheels of chauvinistic boosters like George Weigel, who is all too fond of contrasting a demonic image of Islam with an angelic depiction of Christian history.

Commentators of Weigel's ilk have never been deterred by historical accuracy, of course, for auto-criticism is not part of their repertory. Yet incautious remarks from papal advisors can give their deliberate fulminations a credence which astute readers would tend to deny them. In fact, as a retired diplomat turned Melchite priest reminded me, when the Muslims came into the Byzantine empire from Arabia early on, they were far more impressed by the imperial polity, which they quickly sought to mimic, than by the spirituality of these whom they conquered. Perhaps the Pope would have been better advised to focus on the witness we give (or fail to give) to Muslims than with our touted achievements.

***

In this critique, I have attempted to reach into the lived context of Pope Benedict's egregious miscues about Islam - its history and its teaching - in his Regensburg address. By "lived context" I mean some of the cross-currents operative in that local milieu where he had taught (Regensburg), as well as the orientations of some of those who were at that time advising him about Islam.

But much has happened in the more than six years since he delivered that address, and I cannot conclude without mentioning the way that the Pope personally, and the Vatican institutionally, has taken signal steps to correct their lack of understanding. Perhaps most notably has been their organisation of a group of Catholic and Muslim interlocutors. This group has subsequently met infrequently, but to great avail: it has enabled the principals to come to know one another, and hence to respect their respective faith-commitments. One important participant, Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, has worked assiduously to bring these efforts to fruition, and in the process he and Benedict have become friends.

Most university leaders lack the language and moral imagination to confront evils such as white supremacy. They lack those things not because of who they are, but because of what the modern research university has become. Such an acknowledgment is also part of the moral clarity that we can offer to ourselves and to our students. We have goods to offer, but they are not ultimate goods. And so universities need to look outside themselves and partner with other moral traditions and civic communities.

Facebook will decide that its users prefer video to words, or ideologically pleasing propaganda to more-objective accounts of events - and so it will de-emphasize the written word or hard news in its users' feeds. When it makes shifts like this, or when Google tweaks its algorithm, the web traffic flowing to a given media outlet may plummet, with rippling revenue ramifications. The problem isn't just financial vulnerability, however. It's also the way tech companies dictate the patterns of work; the way their influence can affect the ethos of an entire profession, lowering standards of quality and eroding ethical protections.

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